From Biology to Sociopolitics: Conceptual Continuity in Complex Systems [Hardcover]

Professor Heinz Herrmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0300072538 | ISBN-13: 978-0300072532

The need to deal with complexity has become one of the salient characteristics of the postmodern era. In this original book, distinguished cell biologist Heinz Herrmann explores how we understand living and other complex systems. The conventional basis of understanding rests on abstract general theories. Here, Herrmann proposes a new paradigm -- conceptual continuity -- as a means of comparing systems of divergent complexity and resolving problems in such complex systems as human societies.

Herrmann envisions the inanimate world, life, and human existence as systems of increasing complexity that represent physical, biological, and sociopolitical realities. These systems may be related by a common form of understanding, conceptual continuity, that is established when two entities share a common element or form an intermediary complex. Herrmann compares the different ways that physics and biology reach conceptual continuity. In the ideal systems of physics, he says, the general abstractions of theories lead to the establishment of conceptual continuity. Yet this is not true in complex biological or sociopolitical systems, where identification of highly specific systems components is required to establish conceptual continuity. The author offers a historical survey and numerous examples to illustrate the range and meaning of conceptual continuity, and he proposes the paradigm not as an exclusive alternative but as a complementary mode of understanding complex systems.

"Herrmann takes an important issue, complexity, and analyzes it extremely well from numerous angles -- historical, philosophical, and biological". -- Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (June 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300072538
• ISBN-13: 978-0300072532
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,350,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful treatise, wise and scholarly, August 22, 1999

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This review is from: From Biology to Sociopolitics: Conceptual Continuity in Complex Systems (Hardcover)

Carefully written and well documented, FROM BIOLOGY TO SOCIOPOLITICS by Heinz Herrmann is a remarkable work. Herrmann has studied the processes by which we humans handle the complexity and chaos of natural systems in the decision-making process whether in our sociopolitical behavior or in our quest for scientific truth. Science is as dependent on a commonly recognized conceptual construct as it is on a recognized vocabulary or classification system. Without vocabulary we could not communicate and without a conceptual construct we could not reason. Herrmann proposes a new paradigm for science and society -- conceptual continuity. Conceptual continuity provides a construct for the intellectual encapsulation of conplex or chaotic observations within the precepts of science enabling its orderly progress without the need for rejection of phenomena whose causes are unknowable or whose processes are complex. Herrmann's articulation of that paradigm is remarkable enough for the sciences alone but even more remarkable is his generalization of "conceptual continuity" to the realm of sociopolitics. In hindsight the generalization seems simple and natural but most great ideas do.

The treatment presented in the work is especially significant because it is accomplished through the direct application of careful logical thinking and not flung out of a computer as reworked information, so common in this electronically driven information age. The work is a tribute to the human mind and an example of the advantage that the wise ones, the sapiens, still hold over the flawless memories of the electronic ones -- an exquisite example of the ability of the human intellect to raise information to the level of knowledge and, through careful generalization, to elevate knowledge to the level of wisdom. The human triumphs through perfert , selective "forgetting" rather than through perfect memory. Wisdom is achieved through careful documentation, analysis and generalization rather than through flawless recapitulation. Ultimately society and science will be moved more by wisdom than by information. FROM BIOLOGY TO SOCIOPOLITICS is a clear articulation of a remarkable insight by a truly wise man and it is one of the most thought provoking works I have had the pleasure to read.

I read FROM BIOLOGY TO SOCIOPOLITICS on the heals of reading some works by Amartya Sen who wrote extensively on the role of "entitlement" as the social glue derived from government and creating a mutual need for induvidual success at all social levels. Sen was impressed with the lack of famine in democratic societies and his perception of of mutual needs or entitlements in those societies was a remarkable insight. It won the Nobel Prize. Herrmann's insight strikes me as no less remarkable.